RAWLINGS, JUNIUS AMBROSE

RAWLINGS, JUNIUS AMBROSE (1866–1936). Junius Ambrose Rawlings, physician, was born on March 2, 1866, in Round Stone, Kentucky. He received a preliminary education at Colonel Fowler's Military School in Brandenburg, Kentucky. He earned a medical degree from the University of Louisville (1889) and afterwards established a practice in Kansas City, Missouri. He did postgraduate work at the Sloan Maternity Hospital in New York in 1896. In 1912 he did further postgraduate work in Berlin and Vienna. In October 1897, after he developed signs of pulmonary tuberculosis, he moved to El Paso, Texas. As a specialist in the care of children and pregnant women, Rawlings established the Baby Clinic of El Paso. In addition to delivering hundreds of babies, he organized a school of instruction for local midwives. He also served as president of the El Paso Board of Health and introduced the use of tuberculin testing for dairy herds in the city (1913). He was a charter member of the El Paso County Medical Society and served as its first secretary and third president. He gave numerous presentations during the annual meetings of the Texas State Medical Association and was an active member of the American Medical Association. Rawlings was a longtime member of the board of directors of the Central YMCA and an elder in the First Presbyterian Church. For twenty years he served on the board of directors of Associated Charities, later named the Family Welfare Organization. In 1889 he married Sarah Esmond Mott, and they had two daughters and one son. While providing charity care to babies afflicted with influenza and pneumonia during February and March 1936, Rawlings himself became sick with influenza and died on March 23 of that year.

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

El Paso Times, March 24, 1936. Texas State Journal of Medicine, June 1936.

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